


If Thy Hand Offend Thee

by Mithrigil



Category: Fate/Zero, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Crisis of Faith, Evil, Gen, Geniuses, Mental Health Issues, Parenthood, Pre-Canon, Religion, evil has a conscience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 22:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Father,” the boy asks, “am I bad?”</p><p>“No,” Risei answers without missing a beat, and holds Kirei in his arms, pillow and all. “Never. You did something bad, but bad isn’t something you are. You’re beautiful and good and God loves you, and so do I.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Thy Hand Offend Thee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xiuxi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiuxi/gifts).



> Many thanks to M. for the enthusiastic beta!

**1967.**

The baby comes into this world already screaming. The doctor doesn’t have to smack him. He is a withered, ugly, unwashed and innocent creature with a smattering of dark hair and a frightening set of lungs.

Since there are so few priests at all in Japan, even now, Risei blesses his own son. He calls him a little miracle.

 

**1968.**

His first word in Italian is _papa_. His first word in Japanese, a few weeks later, is _why_.

 

**1969.**

Deprived of his mother, may she rest in peace, the boy clings to Risei’s ankles. Risei, already fifty-three years old, is mistaken for his grandfather everywhere they go. Risei takes it in stride, but little Kirei does not, and insists that Father Kotomine is not just a priest-father, but a father-father, and _his_ father at that, thank you very much. He is quick, and tall and steady for a two-year-old, docile enough to be taken to church and not cry.

He hardly ever cries.

 

**1970.**

Kirei knows his scriptures by rote, his letters in Italian, and all his hiragana and katakana and another kanji every day, it seems. He can count and add but not yet divide. He can navigate knives and forks and chopsticks and which noodles go with which. He asks too many questions for the younger priests and his teachers, fails to make himself understood when he switches between languages, throws fits when they talk down to him and tell him he makes no sense.

Risei remembers this well. Things have changed in fifty years, but not enough, and he hires the best tutors he can buy until Kirei isn’t just smart enough, but old enough, to hold his own in school.

 

**1971.**

“Father?”

Risei looks up from his bible, turns off the radio. It must have been on too loud for the boy to sleep. “Yes, Kirei?”

He is in pale blue pyjamas printed with little frogs, an inch too long in the legs, his little arms folded around the only pillow from his bed, which is nearly as large as he is. “Am I still in trouble?”

Risei smiles. “You won’t be in the morning,” he says. “I’m not angry. But you did a bad thing, so yes, you’re still in trouble.”

Kirei nods, nestles his chin into the pillow and lifts it a little closer to his face. “Why was it bad?”

It’s such an earnest question, innocent but without sniffles or tears. Risei kneels to his level, leaves the bible on the desk. “That manuscript can’t be replaced. It was written so long ago that there won’t ever be another one. You weren’t supposed to touch it at all, and it was even worse of you to rip it apart.”

“I’m sorry,” Kirei says, nodding again. “I thought it was just paper.”

It’s not that there isn’t remorse in his voice. He certainly cried earlier when Father Giuliano spanked him. But if he didn’t know what he did wrong, that beating meant nothing when it was given. Kirei has always been a good boy, Risei thinks: good, and smart, and as holy as any child.

“Father,” the boy asks, “am I bad?”

“No,” Risei answers without missing a beat, and holds Kirei in his arms, pillow and all. “Never. You did something bad, but bad isn’t something you are. You’re beautiful and good and God loves you, and so do I.”

 

**1972.**

It is difficult for Kirei to make friends at school. He takes classes with boys three years older, and even though he plays with the children his own age it never extends to the afternoon. Risei blames himself: it can’t be easy for Kirei, living half the time in one country and half in another, seeing a clearer world than everyone around him. Not every child finds play as easy as Risei used to, and Risei wasn’t nearly as special.

But structured sports are better. When the older boys, eight and nine and ten, discover that Kirei is fast and good with a ball, they ask him to play. They recruit him on their little pranks, steal food from carts in the streets or rearrange the plants on someone’s windowsill or leave tacks on the pews. And Kirei seems happy, or at least nothing seems wrong. What more can Risei ask?

 

**1973.**

“It may be too soon,” the Cardinal says, “but we’re already watching him. If he intends to follow you into the service of the Lord, he may be suited to the Executors. Does he have the talent?”

“I don’t know,” Risei says. “But I don’t think there’s anything my son can’t do.”

 

**1974.**

The red shiba dog belonged -- belongs -- to Tsuchiya Kazuo, the elderly patriarch of one of the churchgoing families in Fuyuki. That he makes the journey from his home to the church every Sunday excuses -- excused -- the little friend he leaves chained to a post outside. But today she slipped her leash, and got into the road, and the driver that hit her is horrified and apologetic. Risei doesn’t know the dog’s name.

Kirei might, but now isn’t the time to ask.

“Look,” Kirei says, holding the dog in his arms like a sleeping baby. “She’s breathing. Her heart’s going. I put her back together inside like you showed me. Did I do it right?”

The dog’s tongue lolls but doesn’t wag. Her fur and her blood are all over Kirei’s Sunday suit, checkered through his skinned knees.

He asks again, “Father, did I do it right?”

Risei makes the first two motions of the sign of the cross. “Almost,” he says.

“Oh.” Kirei looks down at the dog, reaches around awkwardly to try and force her eyes open.

 

**1975.**

It is understandable, natural, for an eight-year-old boy to want nothing but stories about heroes again and again. Risei tells them, gives Kirei books to devour, television shows to watch, bible passages to translate and debate. Kirei always has questions about what makes these heroes holy, what drives them to do God’s work, why one man is righteous and another is not.

Good and evil are simple to a child, even one as special as Kirei. 

 

**1976.**

It takes Risei two panicked hours to find him. There are more hiding places in Rome than Fuyuki, and none of them are nearly as safe, but Kirei finds them all and isn’t the sort of child to hide when he wants to be found. But Risei finally catches up to him in the Catacombs of Praetextatus, curled up in a ball in the darkest corner. Risei tells the young priests helping him to run back and call off the search, and comes to Kirei on his own.

“Father?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m evil,” Kirei says.

Risei is sixty years old, and his legs protest when he kneels. He does it anyway, supporting himself on the wall so that he can reach down to his son. “Never. God loves you, and so do I.”

“He wouldn’t love me if he knew what I feel inside,” Kirei says, mostly to his knees. He isn’t crying, but his breath is short, quavering. “God doesn’t love bad people. And I’m bad.”

“What do you feel that you think is bad?”

“I’m happy when other people are sad.” Kirei switches to Japanese, the way he does when he doesn’t want anyone but Risei to understand him. “I think about people being hurt and it feels good.”

Risei shuts his eyes, folds his arms around Kirei and holds him close and tight. “That’s all right,” he says, carefully, honestly. “Sometimes when people hurt you, you want to hurt them back so they know how it feels. That wanting isn’t evil. But when you want it so much that you can’t forgive, or when you want it so much that you can’t see God anymore--”

“It’s not just bad people,” Kirei says. “Nobody’s hurt me. But I want to hurt them.”

“Them who?”

“I don’t know,” Kirei holds brings his knees even closer to his chest, as if he could shrink out of Risei’s embrace. “I don’t care. I saw that man hanging out the window and I didn’t even know his name, I just wanted him to try to climb back up and I know he couldn’t and I watched him die. I watched him die and it felt good.”

“He’s at peace with God now,” Risei says. “He couldn’t have survived. There’s nothing wrong with being relieved that he isn’t in pain.”

Kirei shoves and struggles, and Risei holds on. “You don’t understand!”

“I do, Kirei, more than you know.”

There is nothing that calms Kirei down like the opportunity to ask, “Why?”

The catacombs are dark, but there’s just enough light for Risei to catch Kirei’s eyes and remind him, _look_. Risei lets go, pulls back his right sleeve. The winding command seals climb high enough on his arm to disappear past his elbow. Of course Kirei has seen them before, and knows as much as he should about what the magic means.

“The day I received these was the first day I felt real anger,” he says. “There was a magus, one of the most evil men in the world, and he’d made so many people suffer for his own selfishness.”

“There’s nothing bad about wanting to kill a magus,” Kirei says. “They do the devil’s work.”

“They’re still people.”

“But you said he was evil.”

“I did, didn’t I.” Risei laughs, a little uneasily, but goes on. “He’d done some truly awful things, I’d even call them unforgivable. I was right to want him dead. But I didn’t just want him dead, in that moment. I wanted to make him know and feel all the pain he’d caused me and everyone else he’d hurt in his life. And I almost did.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No. I heard God, who warned me against becoming like him, and making someone suffer for my pleasure. I stopped fighting him. And instead, I tried to save as many people as I could, and stop his efforts, not to make him suffer, but to prevent him from causing more pain to anyone else.”

“But they’re the same, aren’t they?” Kirei hides his face in Risei’s chest. “The end is the same.”

“You know what’s bad,” Risei says. “That’s the difference.”

“But why does bad feel good?”

He strokes Kirei’s hair. “To tempt us and lead us astray. Sometimes good is a burden. Sometimes the easy way is the bad way. The devil wears a fair face because otherwise no one would follow him at all.”

It’s hard to say whether Kirei accepts that answer or not. But he does think about it, quietly and without tears, and Risei holds him and waits for more questions to come.

 

**1977.**

“It’s time,” the Cardinal says. “Kirei, call the Black Keys.”

“I hear and obey,” Kirei says, and does. They’re almost twice as long as his arms, but other than that the weapons seem as natural to him as breathing.

Risei would say that he could not be prouder, if it weren’t a lie.

 

**1978.**

On Christmas Eve, Kirei takes confession alone, for sins Risei can’t absolve. Executors take care of their own. Kirei is a killer now, and even if the lives of two magi were taken in the name of the Lord, they were still taken, and Kirei took them with two hands and six knives.

A half-hour passes, and no one emerges from the booth. Then another ten minutes. Risei knows he shouldn’t leave, but shouldn’t interrupt, and waits, unable to focus or read or even, consciously, pray.

The wrong door of the confessional opens, and the priest on duty rushes out, darts until he finds Risei. “Father Kotomine, he’s--”

Risei doesn’t have to hear another word, and breaks for the confessional. He wrenches the door open, finds his son with dark stains in his cloak, almost too dark to be only tears.

“It’s not enough,” Kirei says, choked and tight and crying. “It’s wrong. I know it’s all wrong and praying isn’t enough. _Praying isn’t enough._ ”

He’s right. It isn’t.

“It won’t go away,” Kirei whispers, over and over and over, and no, it doesn’t.

 

**1979.**

Or perhaps it does, because no matter how much Risei assures him that he doesn’t have to continue training if he doesn’t want to, Kirei continues.

 

**1980.**

“Are you angry at me?” Kirei asks, more curious than contrite. The faintest brown bruise stands out past the unbuttoned collar of his school shirt. He could have healed it on his own. He hasn’t, to show off.

“Not at all,” Risei says, completely truthful. “You’d hardly be the first.”

“It’s a sin against God.”

“And you wouldn’t be the first to make it. As sins go, that one’s called into question more easily than others, and with good reason. I’m only thankful that you and Vittorio did that because you chose to, not because one of you pushed the other into it. And I’m grateful that you didn’t hurt each other or do anything unsafe.”

Kirei curls his fists at his sides. “But we still shouldn’t have done it. That’s what you’re saying.”

“Only you can know whether you should or shouldn’t have done something like that.” Risei wonders if he should get up from the table, and then doesn’t, folds his hands around his cup of coffee and looks down into the low haze where it’s still too hot. “You haven’t taken vows, and you don’t have to--you may work for the Church, but you aren’t beholden to it. And the world is changing, Kirei, and you’re young, and no matter what you choose to do or who you choose to be I’ll support you. If you think you would be happier with someone like Vittorio, or marrying a woman when you get older if that’s what you want, and having a life as a teacher, a doctor, a street-cleaner, or even nothing at all, as long as it was something that made you feel happy and at peace with yourself and God, I would be at peace with that too.”

Kirei grinds his teeth, and a shudder wracks down his body all the way from his jaw to his heels.

“But if it’s something that tears you apart, no, I won’t be happy,” Risei says. “So ask yourself, the same way you always ask yourself: does it make you happy?”

“No,” Kirei says. His voice cracks.

“Then don’t do it.” Risei smiles. “It’s that simple.”

 

**1981.**

Kirei isn’t the smallest in the line of graduates, despite being four years younger than most of them. When Risei is asked by other proud parents, _what will your son do now?_ , he answers “He wants to take university classes, but other than that, we’re open to a thousand possibilities.”

It isn’t a lie. It’s not.

 

**1982.**

“When we think about how Christ suffered, what are we supposed to feel?”

He’s been reading more of the apocrypha lately, and philosophy, poetry, art, all the things he could read but not truly comprehend until now. Four hours a day, he hones his body with martial arts that Risei can’t pronounce--the rest of it, he reads like a man possessed. He’s nearly fifteen, a gangly mess of too-long and too-short.

“Supposed?” Risei doesn’t mean to laugh. “No, I know what you mean. If our Lord’s suffering doesn’t move you, then you lack compassion. Even those who don’t follow the Church can at least be moved by his plight as a man. But there’s no one thing you’re _supposed_ to feel.”

“Except compassion.”

“It’s _good_ to feel compassion. Compassion makes us human.”

“Can compassion grow out of other feelings?”

“Certainly,” Risei says. “For a lot of people, it starts off as selfish. Concern for others can come out of concern for yourself. If someone is horrified of what happened to our Lord because the thought of it happening to himself moves him, that can grow into sympathy and compassion.”

“But how does it move him? What if it’s not horror?”

Risei has to think about that. “Well, if someone feels joy or relief or vindication because our Lord died, then our Lord didn’t die for him.”

“But aren’t we supposed to feel grateful to him for his sacrifice? And happy that we know how we should be?”

_Supposed,_ again. And _should._

 

**1983.**

Risei doesn’t usually get the chance to see Kirei fight. It’s not as if he follows his son into the field, and it’s not as if a fight ever comes to Risei.

He almost misses it when it does.

They are in Switzerland, of all places, but then the Einzbern have as much right to be here as anyone else, as much right as any magi have to be walking this earth. And the Einzbern have every right to hate Risei. And considering what other laws they break, it’s probably a small thing to attempt to murder him in the street like royalty.

Kirei lashes out as soon as he sees the dagger. He doesn’t even call upon the Black Keys, just clocks the assailant across the head, then grabs her wrist and shakes so the knife goes flying. The assailant was built like a ceramic dagger. That only means she can’t fight back as well as she should. Kirei beats her until her skin matches her eyes and only stops when she’s unconscious.

The smile on his face could be a trick of the light.

 

**1984.**

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

“Kirei--”

“I know I shouldn’t confess to you,” he says. His voice has settled at last, after what seems like an uphill battle, and it’s deeper than Risei’s ever was or will be. He goes on, in Japanese, “But I don’t know where else to go. Please. Listen to me. Really listen to me.”

Risei shuts his eyes, braces his hands against the bench. “All right.”

“A long time ago, you said that I should do what makes me happy.”

“I did.”

“What if nothing does?”

“There are thousands of beautiful things in this world,” Risei says. “You’ve really found nothing at all that makes you happy?”

“You aren’t listening. What if nothing does?”

Risei leans his hand against the divider of the confessional. “Are you asking me this as a priest, or as your father?”

“Whichever has the answer.”

“Neither does, Kirei. But Father Kotomine would say to look to whatever’s hollowing you out inside and open your heart to God.”

“And my father would say?”

“That happiness isn’t something you’re given, it’s something you make for yourself. Happiness is difficult. Some people work for it their whole lives and only find it for a moment.”

“Father?”

“Yes?”

“What makes you happy?”

“You,” Risei answers without having to think about it. “Of all the things I’ve been happy about in my long years, you.”

“But you don’t make me happy.”

“I know,” Risei says. “A child doesn’t have to be happy about his parents the way a parent does about his child.”

Kirei is crying. Risei’s hand darts to the latch and he’s already half-off the bench when Kirei tells him, “No. No, don’t touch me.”

“Kirei--”

“Something’s wrong with me. Something’s wrong _in_ me.” The tears leak into his voice and echo through the confessional. “You can’t be my father, you’re too good to be my father. God made a mistake.”

Risei opens the door, steps out only to open Kirei’s from the outside, and hold his son, his miracle, as close as he can.

“God loves you,” he says, “and so do I.”

*


End file.
